Speaker 1: 0:53

going back to what nick was talking about before in terms of like consciously ignoring, I think um, without it being too personal, I've been participating in some self-soothing practices that aren't necessarily productive or helpful towards my overall evolution, and I've known it and I've had awareness of it. Um, and I guess a part of me has been telling myself you know, you meditate slowly, that just dissipates, it's removed by this practice. But more recently I've it's kind of clicked where I'm like no, there's some changes that need to be made. This needs to be active participation, not just I'll just sit down for 20 minutes twice a day and it'll it'll resolve itself.

Speaker 2: 1:45

It's fine, it won't yeah so what?

Speaker 1: 1:49

I guess I just want to maybe further understand, yeah, that dynamic or that fine line between keep doing the work, keep being stable and, you know, meditating and doing the practices, and that stuff does eventually dissipate, and how much of it is active participation and like for me, it's taken a while and some discomfort for me to be like, oh my God, okay, I get it time to change. But there was a period of time where I was okay in sitting with it, knowing that I was still kind of chipping away at it. But, yeah, where's that? And is it different for situation to situation? Yeah, there's no absolute. And is it different?

Speaker 2: 2:33

for situation to situation. Yeah, there's no absolute answer to describe absolutely everything it's non-prescriptive in that sense but we can speak about it generally, to understand it as a principle and generally speaking, meditation, as I said earlier, it cultivates awareness and through the agency of awareness awareness we can notice our experience. What are we learning to do here? We're learning to notice our experience. What does being conscious mean? It is becoming aware that I am having an experience, that I, the is having an experience. They are two different things.

Speaker 2: 3:17

Prior to developing that awareness, the I and the experience are enmeshed in a murky state. I cannot differentiate between who I am and the experience I'm having. So the experience I'm having is reactive, and so I identify with the voice inside my head that is participating in that reaction and that becomes my. My sense of self, which is erratic, unreliable, and therefore my capacity to sustain confidence in some kind of stability of who I am as a person is completely diminished. And so we fabricate a personality and concealves the stickiness of the experience, and we begin to establish space where we can witness the experience that we're having and for it not to compromise the integrity of the sense of self. And as we begin creating that separation. There's a oh, there I am. Ah, alleviation, ah, peace for a moment, for a moment, and then, you know, then waves continue. It's a process we go ah, ah, ah, like this, where we're remembering ourself and then we're forgetting ourself. We're remembering ourself and then we're forgetting ourselves. We all know what this is like, right. And in this process we start to become increasingly more aware. Incrementally, day in, day out, awareness grows. And as awareness grows, so does our capacity to understand the complexity of the experience that we're having, the consequences of my existence. I'm understanding the responsibility that comes with my existence. I cannot be passive. I need to learn how this thing operates and start operating it consciously, deliberately. I know if I go over there, not good, let's go over here, avoid that. Ah, yes, this is good for me, all of these kinds of decisions that we make to either lead ourselves into greater trouble or free ourselves. So this awareness thing is key.

Speaker 2: 5:49

And then the next layer of development is not ignoring what you're noticing, because that's the big thing that we do. It's like, oh, I don't really want to have to confront that. Look at that. Let's just put that in a nice little compartment over there and pretend it's not happening until it bursts through the door and knocks us out and demands that we pay attention. And then we have to sort of all right in crisis, respond. And as we continue advancing, we hear the banging on the door. Like I'm not going to let that punch me in the head, all right, I'm going to let you out very slowly, okay, it's not so bad. And we process it. And then we get good at that. What's next? And then we get very artful, opening doors everywhere. Come on, boogeyman out you come, scare you back, and they scatter.

Speaker 2: 6:52

I, I'm confident, I am the lord of the manor. I own this experience. I become confident in myself, confidence is generated, confidence is earned, confidence is built. True confidence is earned. Confidence is built true confidence, stability by being active in the process of discovering myself and being willing to move into the discomfort and confront all the spooky things.

Speaker 2: 7:22

And so finding yourself or noticing yourself, indulging in, you know, behaviors that you know are avoidant, that are soothing as opposed to healing, is all a natural part of the process. And again, you know, what we always spray it down with is a good dose of compassion, like, hey, it's cool, I'm in a process here, but there is a fine line we can. It ceases to be compassion when we let ourselves off the hook. We're not letting ourselves off the hook, we're just not beating ourselves up about it. Very important to make that distinction. We hold ourselves accountable. Hey, this is happening, we're going to deal with it. But let's just be light about it, I'm not going to beat myself up.

Speaker 2: 8:12

Let's get curious. Why am I doing this? What is the feeling that's driving this behavior? Why am I insisting on eating that whole block of chocolate at 1 am? Why? Why Tasting yummy is not a good enough reason. Tasting yummy is not a good enough reason.

Speaker 2: 8:34

And so we begin to examine. We begin to examine and we sit with it, and it's through awareness that we start to notice. And then the sensitivity of the condition makes us go hey, veda, that looks interesting. I've got this like relentless sugar craving. Oh, it's also to do with this and this and this and that and perhaps some emotional stuff. We can help you with that. And a prescription will be made.

Speaker 2: 9:06

And then, you know, someone says oh, I do this breath work? That's really powerful, just like moving big energy. I might give that a go. And you know some yoga asana. And you know bushwalks long, heart-to-hearts, women's group, women's circles, get together and just talk about that experience, all these things, they're all contributing. It's just making choices to surround yourself in environments and experiences that yield and reflect back to you the truth of who you are. So you're held accountable, being vigilant in your self-accountability and you know you fumble. No problem, get back up. You know it's not a pass or fail deal. You know no one's sort of looking over you going oh sorry, yeah, except for you, sorry, yeah, except for you, exactly except for you. And that's one of the spooky things we've got to confront and go back.